Empathy Beyond Sympathy

To be able to accept others, you must be a good if not a better person. A good person has the quality not only of sympathy but also of empathy.

What's the difference between empathy and sympathy? When watching the reported news that nearly 80 refugees were found dead inside a truck on a Austrian highway, what did you feel? Some feel nothing or numbed, because they are often inundated with these tragic news that they no longer have any emotion or feeling left. Some may show some sympathy by saying something like "Oh my God! I feel sorry for them!" and then switch to another channel. If you happen to have experienced the traumas of a refugee yourself -- the anxiety, desperation, fear, and hunger -- your emotional reaction to the news would be somewhat different -- one of empathy, much more intense than sympathy. Empathy is whatand how you feel for an individual because you have had that similar experience before; sympathy is simply your feeling towards someone in a sad or tragic situation. One generally does not feel empathy unless one has been in the same shoes.

That said, empathy can be cultivated and nurtured. 

How?  

Dalai Lama, the  spiritual leader of Tibet, once said that every time he walks into a room full of people of different nationality, culture, religious background, he tries to connect with them through compassion and loving-kindness, which are acts of empathy. In other words, they are deliberate acts of connecting with others, irrespective of their culture, sex, race, or beliefs because no man is an island, and we are all somehow and somewhat inter-connected with one another. We see the good and the bad in others as well as in ourselves. More importantly, we see why and how we all behave differently in different situations.

Remember, we are all imperfect, no matter how we think of ourselves. Therefore, we should always express empathy beyond sympathy towards others.

Stephen Lau

Copyright©2018 by Stephen Lau